


A Moment of Humanity

by Syksy



Category: Not Before Sundown - Johanna Sinisalo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:06:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/pseuds/Syksy





	A Moment of Humanity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gentlezombie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Мгновение человечности](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2299343) by [sweatergod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweatergod/pseuds/sweatergod)



The autumn forest smells rotten and musty sweet. The leaves are yellow and wet against my face, their serrated edges surprisingly sharp when I fail to duck my head in time. Not that it matters, I have learned to disregard pain most of the time. What I find I can't ignore is the piece of greying paper by my feet. It seems incongruous in this existence, like a visitor from another life come to tell me of friends long forgotten, or a bright exotic bird suddenly flung from its warm rainforest-home into my cold and hostile one.

Slowly I bend down, only distantly noticing how the movement makes the rain slosh unchecked down the neck of my ragged shirt. I pick the thing up gingerly, afraid that it might vanish, or at least break, which seems the likelier option given what I remember of the properties of paper when wet.

>   
>  IT WAS TROLLS, PETÄJÄLÄ ADMITS  
> 

I have to stop reading, after just the headline. Somehow I had almost managed to forget that there were still people out there. People living in those houses seen from the forest edge, people raising those cows I sometimes get to roast pieces of over a carefully concealed fire. People who will be frightened, soon enough, if they already aren't.

So, what are people saying these days?

>   
>  The rumours that trolls have been behind the recent attacks all around Tampere and the nearby towns have finally been confirmed by the spokesman.... in light of this we should reconsider our approach.... no evidence that this is not just a natural continuation of the phenomenon of so called "city-animals" ....  
> 

I feel faint. They have no idea, and how could they. This is their world, it follows their rules. There are occasional earthquakes and storms and whatnot, of course, but in the greater scheme of things they have the earth in their hands. Or so they've thought.

I certainly haven't, not for a long time.

It's not that I feel sympathy. That's one emotion I'd run really short of even before all this begun. I just hadn't considered, hadn't had the time or the energy to consider the implications of any of this. My world has been scent and sweat and want. I have become, not one of them, but a creature of the forest nonetheless. And now this has woken me up. Made me a stupid human with stupid human concerns again.

Should I do something? Not that I think that there is anything much I could do. Not that I especially want to. But isn't there some responsibility I have, as a sapient being, to at least try to avoid what seems so painfully inevitable now? Even though I have no allegiance left, no real agency left. Should I fight windmills and fail?

 

And then the scent of juniper calms me.


End file.
